Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re quite aware that the medical marijuana industry continues to be a perpetual war zone and patients seem to be losing ground throughout the state. Municipalities are at a loss on how to deal with this ever growing and prevalent conflict between federal, state and local laws.

While many have outright banned medical marijuana dispensaries, others have attempted to limit them by an absolute number or have failed to do anything at all, only to find new dispensaries proliferating in their communities without any regulation or control.

With the Pack case decision now pending before the California Supreme Court, wherein Pack, a potential collective director in Long Beach who was not selected to win a lottery spot intended to determine who would be eligible for a dispensary license, many California cities are using the case as their basis for banning collective operations within their jurisdictions.

Colorado will vote on whether to end marijuana prohibition this November

It's official. The 2012 statewide initiative to regulate marijuana like alcohol in Colorado has qualified for the November ballot and will appear as Amendment 64. That means in just eight months voters will have the opportunity to make the state the first place in the world to end marijuana prohibition and replace it with a legal and regulated marijuana market for adults 21 and older.

Reaching this point was not easy. The process of drafting the language took about six months, and getting the ballot language approved by the state took another couple months. Then, of course, was the petition drive. For six months the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol worked with hundreds of volunteers and businesses around the state to collect the roughly 86,000 valid signatures of registered Colorado voters required to qualify for the ballot.